What do Field Skills do and how to get them? This Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Field Skills Guide will explain the complex feature in detail so you understand how to get the most out of your Blade’s Field Skills, used to do things like opening chests, clearing obstacles, obtaining extra loot from Collection Points and leaping to high locations.
Field Skills are abilities that are given to every Blade you recruit. There’s a huge variety, each serving a different purpose. Unlike other abilities the Field Skills are exclusively used in the field, when you are exploring the world and interacting with its elements. They are not used in combat so can often be overlooked.
Navigate to a Blades menu and then use R and L to switch between the different abilities. At the end of the row is the Field Skills menu. This tells you what Field Skills your Blade has. Every Blade is born with different Field Skills, you can have three different versions of the same Blade and they could all have entirely different Field Skills. Because of this, it’s always a good idea to check a Blade’s Field Skills before releasing them as they may have something you need.
Understanding Field Skills
When you encounter a Field Skills interaction point, this menu will appear on your screen. On the right hand side is the required Field Skills to complete the interaction. In this case, I need two levels of Focus and one level of Lockpicking to open this chest. Pyra is equipped so she appears as she has level one Focus, however that is not enough. To open this chest I would need level two Focus and another Blade with level one Lockpicking. The exact requirements differ depending on what you are interacting with but the logic is the same. You must have the associated Field Skills at the correct level to meet the requirements.
Leveling Up Field Skills
If the item you are interacting with requires two levels of Focus, you can equip two Blades with level one Focus. It stacks and unlocks the interaction point. However, later in the game you will need higher levels so you need to understand how to level up and improve your Field Skills. Look at Pyra’s Affinity Chart above. We already know she has level One focus so this must be on her Affinity Chart somewhere.
Navigate to the next arch of the Affinity Chart and you will see another Focus node. You need to raise Trust to unlock the second arch and then complete the Condition, in this case using certain items from the Pouch. You can navigate to Field Skills easily on any Affinity Chart, they are the skills highlighted with a green background.
Use Weak Blades For Field Skills
It’s very likely that you have a set group of Blades that you like to use for combat, usually obtained through Rare Core Crystals. However, you’ve also likely got a ton of much weaker Blades that do very little more than look good. While useless in combat these Blades can be used to your advantage.
While opening Common Core Crystals it’s very likely you’ll get some trash Blades. During one of my Core Crystal opening sessions I got a few useless Blade’s and then Ikki and Faera. While still useless in combat, both of them have the Field Skill of Agronomy. This skill allows me to vastly improve the quality and number of items I harvest from a vegetable related Collection Point. Check out each of their Field Skills below
So if I have a quest or I need to farm certain vegetable items, which I do as there’s an animal you can feed in town. I would equip both these Blades and have an Agronomy level of two. Other Blades can be used in a similar way so be sure to look for the different Field Skills before releasing any Blades you don’t want.
That wraps up our Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Field Skills Guide. You should know everything you need to know. If you have any further questions post a comment below and we’ll be sure to help out.
